Culture

BON TON ... A TIMELESS CLASSIC

In today' society it is always easier to come into contact with attitudes of dubious morality.

We are increasingly getting used to behaviors and gestures that only a few years ago would have embarassed most people.

Lately, however, we are again focusing on the art of good manners, a symbol of elegance and refinement, now freed from being exclusive domain of the upper classes.

Let’s see some Bon Ton hints that will definitely be useful and will certainly please the people around us.

At the restaurant

At the restaurant the man precedes the woman and they will stop waiting for a waiter to accompany them to the table.

The woman sits in the best place, and the waiter (or the man who accompanies him) has to move the chair to make her sit down easily.

For requests to the waiter and to choose courses, once women did not address directly to the waiter, their partner would speak for them; today this custom is outdated.

Some men, however, prefer to "manage the situation" ... and often ladies don’t turn their nose up at it!

When you are a guest, you don’t have to exaggerate in the choice of courses, neither choosing too expensive dishes, nor choosing extremely cheap dishes; you could cause problems, in the first case, or offend, in the other case.

To call the waiter at the table you will just to wave your hand.The bill, by tradition, has to be paid by the man, unless it was the woman to invite him to dinner.In a group or among young people you can also split the bill equally.You should leave a tip equal to the 5-10% of the amount.Before leaving, men will help women to get up and put on their coat, and will follow them.They will be the first to leave to then keep the door open to the ladies.

The Telephone

When you make a call you should avoid certain times when you are likely to disturb as early in the morning, late at night and at mealtimes.If for urgent reasons you have to call at these times, you should offer your apologies for the inappropriate moment.In a phone conversation, you must first identify and then immediately ask for the person you want to talk with.The same rule also applies when you call someone on the cell phone.

To call "mobile" phones you should also act with sagacity: you should always switch your phone off, or, at least, turn the ringtone off, in the places where it can cause trouble such as offices, theaters, cinemas, places of worship.If the phone rings while you are in the presence of other people you should apologize with them; instead, if you have to call, you will have to bid farewell to everyone there.The choice of ring tone is very important too. Fashionable loud tunes are not certainly a symbol of elegance. Better to choose a traditional tune or at least a brief hint to some discreet piece of the classical repertoire.SMS and MMS should be used parsimoniously.You don’t have to open long discussions (because in that case it would be more appropriate to call) but use them only for fast communications that usually don’t require a response.Also take care in writing SMS since, due to their shortness and the language used, they can easily be misinterpreted and create misunderstandings.

The conversation

Conversation is one of our main business cards: it shows our education, our cultural background and our personality. In this sense you should follow some simple rules.

First of all, remember that it is not legitimate to interrupt a speech.For no reason, therefore, we should interrupt people who are talking with us or with others.

Special attention goes to our wives or husbands. They should not be interrupted (and not even corrected); you should let them finish their conversation before start speaking.There’s nothing more depressing than those husbands who interrupt their wives’ accounts and observations with: "It’s not true! You're wrong! Dear, don’t you realize that you’re boring everybody? ".

Moreover you should be careful about the conversation topics; an evening with friends that degenerates into jokes is almost worse than that one that degenerates into "holiday summer pictures of ten years ago."

Absolutely to avoid is the inelegant and very dangerous gossip; it is indeed a double-edged sword, because, next time, you could be the subject of conversation.With the ladies, in addition to the subjects “children” and “house”, other successful subjects are “fashion” or “shopping”, even the less curious and informed ones will always have something to talk about.

People’s education is also revealed through their voice, their language, their tone and the accent they use in speaking.We should therefore try, on the one hand, to eliminate or correct the faults of pronunciation, the marked dialect accent and the verbal phrases that are not properly Italian; on the other hand, we should avoid spacing out our speeches with phrases trivially unscrupulous and uninhibited.

We should therefore use a quiet tone and a simple correct and polite language.